Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Review - Liberty City in your palm

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 26 March 2009 16:32

Entertainment

Roll Up!  Roll Up!  Come and witness the freak-show that defies logic.  How could RockStar Games cram a Liberty City experience into the Nintendo DS.  Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, that’s how.

It is kind of hard to believe what RockStar Games have achieved here.  Talking to developers in recent times , it is clear that developing games for the Nintendo hand-held mega selling DS is a challenge, given the amount of computing power available on other consoles.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
	Developer	Rockstar Games
	Publisher	Take-Two
	Rating	MA 15+
DS

So it is unsurprising when the platform generally sees the simpler side of the gaming spectrum. 

Well no longer, RockStar have managed to squeeze out much of what makes the Console and PC versions of GTA, and ram it into the diminutive gaming platform.

This time it is the Asian triad gangs getting the focus of another tale from an obviously multicultural Liberty City.  As Huang Lee, the son of the recently deceased Triad gang boss, you are travelling to Liberty City to deliver a family heirloom to his uncle, whom has plans of taking over as gang-boss.

The deal goes bad, the heirloom sword goes missing and Lee finds himself trapped in Liberty City with only a slim thread of his former power, and a bit of help from his now shamed uncle to make a new start.

Once into the game proper, Lee’s main aim is to acquire wealth and power, but in typical RockStar fashion, and amazingly despite the hardware, the road will contain variety both in story line and mission structure. 

The sixty odd missions are previewed in graphic novel style, with subtitles and limited animation managing to get across the grit and personality of the story.  Despite the lack of voice dialogue the structure and tension is maintained with aplomb.

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